


(these problems aside) i think i taught you well

by audreyii_fic



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 05:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11821971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyii_fic/pseuds/audreyii_fic
Summary: The Doctor is possessive of Amelia Pond, perhaps whether she wants to be possessed or not. (Spectacularly unhealthy early-S5 Doctor/Amy.)





	(these problems aside) i think i taught you well

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I wrote this, like, five years ago and completely forgot about it. Here, have some very old angst.

 

 

_**(but these problems aside) i think i taught you well** _

 

 

__

_You are sweet, Doctor, but I wasn’t thinking anything quite so… long term._

It’s a delicate process.

She isn’t the first companion he’s manipulated – no, no, certainly not. In one way or another he’s used and changed them all for his own purposes, but usually it’s of necessity (though survival can be categorized in many different ways) or by accident (though accidents aren’t quite so accidental when one knows all that is, was, and could ever be). Only rarely does he make a deliberate choice to dismantle.

And this new him – this one that can’t do without Amelia Pond, not once, not ever – is by far the most methodical about it.

 

***

 

They don’t talk about what happened in her bedroom. He just takes Amy to the next planet, the next timeline, the next adventure, and ignores her pout as best he can. But he also doesn’t even allude to the bridal gown hanging in her cabinet. He pretends as though it never happened, he never saw it, she never pressed her lips to his and slid her hands down his chest and told him that she was getting married in the morning.

Amy Pond is not the sort of girl to be put off, but a few trips, loud explode-y ones, at least keep her busy until she seems willing to table the issue.

But he doesn’t forget.

 

***

 

The encounter with River – blast that woman, whoever she is – has made Amy curious about regeneration. She peppers him with questions as he’s trying to fix whatever part of the TARDIS has decided to make the hot water tap pour liquid nitrogen (an event which wound up inconvenient on a number of levels).

Does it hurt?

How often does it happen?

Can you choose what you look like?

Are you really the same person every time?

“It’s a bit like getting a new computer,” he finally says, grappling for a metaphor that fits her era. “It's… okay, you transfer all your old files,  _very_  old files, some of which you can’t even open because you’ve forgotten your password, but the operating system doesn’t work the same way at all, and sometimes it’s full of bugs and viruses, literally on occasion, and lots of the software isn’t compatible, so even though you’ve got everything you had before it’s been reorganized and mixed up and the keystroke shortcuts are all strange and you have to choose a new desktop theme and–”

“So you’re saying you get a bigger hard drive every time you regenerate.”

That shuts him up.

 

***

 

He’s always been possessive. But it doesn’t follow that he always made the decision to possess.

It’s been worse, recently. The last few times in particular. He craves now in ways that he didn’t when he was just one of many; but he’s the last, the very very last, they’re all dead and it’s made him clingy.

Rose was certainly not just a companion, and his first alone-self made the decision to possess her, too, to pull her from her home and make himself the center of her universe, threatening to leave her behind if she so much as stayed for tea with her mother. It worked, too well, it burned them both alive. The pain of her loss is different, now; the memories still there in his head but it is though he watches them on a vid-screen. He is sympathetically sad for the tragedy, but he did not experience it first hand.

(The guilt never weakens, though.)

Yes, the last hims needed Rose Tyler, and they were brutal with it. The new him is not so blunt or rude. The new him needs Amy Pond, and he knows how to be careful.

 

***

 

He slowly, oh so slowly, turns dull Leadworth into the stuff of nightmares.

He takes Amy to New New Earth (New Glasgow specifically) where there is no such thing as ‘shut’. Every business is open day and night without end.

After that they drop in on the Atraxi, might as well say hello, being as they’re in the neighborhood and all. They receive a polite, decidedly fearful welcome, and soak in the great saline springs until his fingers have turned pruny and Amy’s magnificent hair has drifted along the surface of the water to tickle his shoulder.

“At least you took off the bowtie,” she says with a theatrical sigh.

“And the shirt,” he reminds her.

“I think that made it worse. Who swims with braces on and no shirt?”

“I do.” She snorts at this, eyes closed, and he adds, “They’re not so bad, the Atraxi. Very forceful though.” Beat. “Best thing for it, really, that they won’t be coming back to your neighborhood. Aliens are a bit much for Leadworth, aren’t they?”

Amy is uncharacteristically quiet after that. He allows himself to study the pattern of freckles along the curve of her shoulder, just visible above the water, as a reward for his delicacy.

 

***

 

The psychic pollen nearly ruins everything.

The Dream Lord is him and he is the Dream Lord, of course, but the mess of neurological and psychological entanglements that happen in the TARDIS make it easy for the nightmare to produce a living, breathing Rory Williams, an accurate enough simulacrum that Amy doesn’t question his reality. She stands there in her nursery: grown up Amy, married Amy, pregnant Amy, feet which floated in space nailed to the floor.

“Gone daddy gone,” the Dream Lord croons in his head as Amy insists that this, this horrible, horrible,  _offensive to all things Amelia Pond_  existence is her reality. “Just look at her: a plain little housewife in a plain little town. Not quite so mad and impossible anymore.”

“Stop it,” he says quietly.

Amy (not real not real Amy) gives him a strange look. “Stop what?”

The voice starts to laugh. “Come on, Doctor, is this real? Is it  _true_?  _She_  certainly thinks it is – and how very happy it makes her! Haven’t quite ripped all the Leadworth out of her yet, have you,  _Time Lord?_  But keep trying, dismantle her, take her down to her foundations and rebuild and see if she’s still Amelia Pond when you’re done!”

He figures it out and gets them free before Amy chooses. It’s not time yet.

 

***

 

She should be a Time Lord. He’d keep her safe so she’d never regenerate, because he can’t imagine changing even one cell of Amelia Jessica Pond, but she would glow with the light of the vortex and it would be the three of them – he, Amy, and the TARDIS – running forever, forever.

(He thinks she’d be The Kissogram.)

Well, he can’t make her like him, but there are other possibilities. Body clocks, gene manipulators, serum treatments legal and illegal. Risky choices; human brains are so delicate, they’re not made to comprehend more than the (single breath) century they’re given. If Liz Ten hadn’t had her memory wiped every ten years she would have gone mad. But maybe she could do that, she could like that, she could press her own reset button decade on decade and he could tell her all the fairy tales they’d lived and they would–

These fantasies aren’t good. He keeps dreaming anyway.

(He’d take her if she went mad, too. The Madman and Madwoman with the Box.)

 

***

 

Amy is contemplative in a bad way after the psychic pollen, and, clawed raw inside from the false memory of her married pregnant  _long-term_  life, he overplays his hand.

“We should pick up your fiancé,” he says lightly. “Take him with us. The Shang Dynasty threw stag parties that would be banned on most civilized worlds,  _and_  a few uncivilized ones; could be a laugh, as long as no one comes home diseased, but there are booster shots for that sort of thing, or so I’ve been told. What do you say?”

She’s supposed to refuse with a half-laugh and a slight sheen of panic in her eyes. She’s not supposed to rub absently at the naked spot on her fourth finger and murmur: “Yeah. Maybe we should.”

He has the TARDIS 'accidentally’ drop them right in the middle of the Second War of the Interstellar Empire of the Unnamed Shrew. A week later they stumble off planet banged-up but alive (which is more than can be said for the Interstellar Empire), and he just happens to forget about his suggestion. If Amy (high on adrenaline and giggling uncontrollably) remembers it, she doesn’t say anything.

 

***

 

Amelia Pond can  _run_. Of course she can literally run – everyone who’s ever been around him for any length of time and remained alive can – but she’s also fast, so fast, and good, so good at the  _away_  part of running. Most creatures, they run  _to_. They run  _for_. But Amy runs forward because what’s behind her is scary and what’s in front of her… well, maybe it’s scary too, but it doesn’t matter. She prefers the devil she doesn’t know, and so does he. She runs and she loves it, and as long as he can keep her eyes focused forward, keep her from looking back and deciding that what’s behind her isn’t as terrifying as she thought it was, soon she’ll forget she ever wanted anything else. She’ll run for the sheer pleasure of it. She’ll run just because she can.

It’s not a bad life, it really isn’t.

 

***

 

“How much do you think about going back to your home?”

“I don’t,” he lies remorselessly.

Amy rests her chin on her forearm and looks down at him to where he works on the TARDIS machinery. She’s been lying facedown on the glass floor for the longest time, and he’s pretended to be annoyed just enough to convince her it will be fun to keep doing it. He likes her there. “You’re not as good a fibber as you think you are,” she says.

His lips quirk at the gorgeous naiveté of that statement. But she’s just right enough – he’s not as good a fibber  _to her_  as he ought to be – that he softens the lie to something less true and more believable, and better suited to what he wants. “When I think about it, I wish I were still able to go home,” he says, ignoring the pain in his chest that threatens to crush him for using Gallifrey this way. “But if I could, I wouldn’t. If I knew that my planet was  _there_ , just in case… that would be enough. That would always be enough.” He turns his head up and looks Amelia straight in the eye. “I wouldn’t need go back.”

Amy keeps his gaze (green green green eyes) for long moments, then nods thoughtfully and lays her cheek back on her arms.

After that she stops rubbing the place on her finger where her engagement ring should (never) be, and he knows he’s winning.

 

***

 

He wants her, of course. However old he really is, however old he feels in his hearts, this new him is young and has all the desires that accompany youth. He sees her legs, her mouth, her hair that flames under each and every sun. His hands ache to clutch and stroke.

But, ironically, it’s her sultry smiles and flirtatious words that keep him away. No more attacks, but she doesn’t make it a secret that she wants him too, no secrets at all with Amelia. He ignores it with effort invisible and wrenching. Satisfying her might lead to her satisfaction. He cannot risk Amy Pond being satisfied.

Patience is a virtue, and he must wait out those smiles, wait until she wants so much more than a quick laughing tumble and a childish fantasy fulfilled. Wait until she wants long-term.

 _His_  version of long-term.

 

***

 

He crumbles after they meet Vincent. Sick with jealousy, sicker with hope ( _I’m not the marrying kind_ , and such surprise on her face after, she can’t believe those beautiful words tumbled out of her mouth), he takes her back to the TARDIS and brushes away her tears.

“Good things and bad things,” he says, fingers inching up the back of her neck to card her hair, fire in his grasp. “But isn’t it better, Amy, to have good things and bad things, instead of  _nothing_?”

She gulps back a sob and looks at him, gaze flicking from eye to eye. “What’s nothing?” she whispers, fearful, as he wants her to be.

He says simply: “Leadworth.”

Then he kisses her, undresses her, takes her there on the console while the TARDIS hums with something like disapproval. Afterwards he spends almost an hour untangling her hair from the typewriter strand by strand.

Amelia Pond grins at him, eyes bright. “And here I thought you said Time Lords came first.”

He smirks.

 

***

 

Not after a beautiful trip, not after a happy trip, no no no. He takes her home after a hair-raising near death experience, when she’s full of adrenaline and life and her feet still tap with their instinct to run.

Amy pulls up short, throwing out an arm to stop herself from stepping from fairy tale to reality.

“Why did you bring me back?” she asks him, staring at her room.

“You’re getting married in the morning,” he says by way of explanation. (And there it is, hanging in the closet, that bridal gown of his nightmares, glimmering white. They haven’t been gone five minutes since she kissed him.) “You’ll need a good night’s sleep.”

A shiver runs through her body. “Does it have to be morning yet?”

He shakes his head.

“Does it have to be morning  _ever?_ ”

“No. It doesn’t.” He touches her shoulder, plays with a stray lock of her hair, oh so gently with his Girl Who Waited. “Time can be rewritten,” he tells her.

She looks at him.

“It’s your choice,” he lies.

Amelia Pond steps back into the TARDIS, and the Doctor closes the bluer-than-blue doors firmly behind her.

 

 

_**end** _


End file.
